Conventional computerized devices, such as personal computers, laptop computers and the like allow document developers to connect to a network such as the Internet to view digital content available for purchase from content providers. Content providers provide servers on such networks that allow merchants to display purchasable digital content (e.g., photography, graphics, etc) for document developer customers to purchase online. Customers are able to perform online searches by providing search criteria such as keywords, and then choose from the results to make their purchase. As an example, if a document developer is looking for pictures of cars, they can visit a content provider web site that sells digital pictures and can enter the search term “cars”. In response, the content provider web site searches a library of digital content (that may include more than one content provider web site) and can compile the results of the search. The content provider web site typically displays the results of the search to the customer in the form of reduced size low resolution snapshots of the purchasable content (i.e. “thumbnail images”), and for each thumbnail image, provides an item description such as a picture title, and purchase price. Such content provider sites often allow the developer/customer to download a reduced quality version of the image that they want to use in their document to produce a draft copy of the document. If the draft copy is acceptable, the developer/customer can download a high-resolution version of that image for use in the production run of the document. Once the customer purchases the digital content in this manner, the purchased items are then downloaded to the customer.
In general, there are two varieties of digital images available for purchase: rights-managed images and royalty-free images. Content providers that sell rights-managed images provide controls to track what type of industry is purchasing such images and how many copies of the image are being used in a production run. As an example, suppose a drug company is developing marketing materials for a new drug that helps ailing elderly people. The developer of such marketing material may require an image of an elderly person in a wheelchair. The developer can search for and purchase a rights-managed image that shows an elderly person in a wheelchair from a content provider web site. During the purchase process, the web site system that sells the image receives a description of the type of industry for which the image is going to be used. This information is stored in a record that is associated with the image so that subsequent purchasers (or would-be purchasers) can identify past purchasers of the rights-managed image. Thus one purpose for tracking the type of industry and/or document in which the image is being used is to provide some feedback to future potential purchasers about who has purchased this same image in the past. Using the drug company example, if a second drug company also needs an image of a person in a wheelchair for drug marketing purposes, the content developer for this second drug company can review the purchase history for the rights managed image and can identify that another drug company has used this same image for a similar purposes. The content developer for the second drug company can thus avoid a potentially embarrassing situation of using the same image in a similar marketing campaign. Rights-managed images tend to be more expensive than royalty free images in part due to the more controlled environment in which they are sold.